Your connected home

Who needs a smartphone when you have a voice? Suggesting that the future of smart home control will center not on any device but rather on yourself is a new startup called Brilliant. Its flagship device, Brilliant Control, is branded as a “smart lighting solution that gives anyone in the house the ability to access music, climate, and other common smart home devices with just a simple touch or voice command — no smartphone required.” So put down your mobile and clear your throat — your voice is about to be heard.Promising easy installation that takes just minutes, the Brilliant Control comes with an intuitive touchscreen that serves as the hardware hub for your connected home. But don’t worry, you don’t have to use it. Rather, you can just talk to your home, and while it won’t talk back, it will certainly listen and respond.“While renovating my house, it was important to me that anyone in any room could adjust lighting, music, … [Read more...] about You don’t need a phone to manage your smart home if you have Brilliant Control

Your smart home is making itself safer. Over the weekend, the Z-Wave Alliance, the consortium behind the security standards utilized by a number of smart home gadgets, announced a new security protocol known as the Security 2 (S2) framework. It’s described as “the most advanced security for smart home devices and controllers, gateways, and hubs in the market today,” and seeks to tamp down on growing concerns that your smart home could actually be leaving you vulnerable to hacks and attacks.“We are absolutely committed to making Z-Wave the safest, most secure ecosystem of smart devices on the global market,” said Mitchell Klein, executive director of the Z-Wave Alliance, “Our work, in conjunction with the entire Alliance membership, will ensure that developers, service providers, manufacturers, and consumers alike will look to Z-Wave as the most trusted solution with the highest levels of protection.”The S2 framework was actually first … [Read more...] about Z-Wave just made your smart home devices safer via a new security protocol

As Samsung pushes further into the smart home industry, it has announced all of its 2016 smart TVs will be compatible with the SmartThings platform. Furthermore, all SUHD TVs will be equipped with the SmartThings Hub, enabling them to act as a controller for the entire smart home.SmartThings is the company’s smart home division — acquired in the middle of last year for $200 million — that acts as a single platform for a wide range of Samsung-branded and third-party smart home devices. The idea behind the platform is to allow different types of smart home devices to be controlled by a single app, rather than hassle with individually controlling each device with separate apps.While all 2016 Samsung smart TVs will be able to be part of a Smart Things system, only SUHD TVs equipped with a hub will actually act as a control device. The hub itself is available for $99 on its own. .There will be a SmartThings hub app on the supported TVs, … [Read more...] about Samsung’s 2016 smart TVs will be ready to take control of your smart home

Just when you thought it might be safe to cut the cable cord: Your lowly cable box could become the hub of the smart home.Don’t laugh. Think the cable companies are going to give up their cash cow that easily? In the age of video streaming and a slew of Internet of Things products and protocols, people seek simplicity, a way that everything can work together, and one bill for it all.Those are some of the points covered in a white paper by Alticast on Pay TV Operators and the Internet of Things. Alticast is working with cable operators to help them expand their businesses into the emerging IoT arena, so the company is certainly invested in promoting the set-top box as king of IoT.This notion for the TV as smart-home hub has been around for a while, and it’s not far-fetched. IoT devices could be networked to the cable box to show video camera feeds when the doorbell rings, mute the sound, provide visual alerts to events with other devices, and even turn down the … [Read more...] about Ready to toss your cable box? It could be what connects your smart home

Amazon wants to bring Alexa into another room in your home — the living room. the 4K Fire TV’s voice-activated remote can now help control your smart home.Lots of people use their Amazon Echo speakers in the kitchen as a hands-free assistant who can convert ounces to cups (or give advice on boiling eggs) just by asking Alexa. But the Bluetooth speaker can do lots more than that, and Amazon has incorporated some of those features into the Fire TV (currently on sale for $75), which is the retailer’s first device besides Echo to get Alexa. You press the voice button on your remote, and Alexa answers through the Fire TV.In addition to playing music from your library or audiobooks from Audible, you can use the Fire TV’s remote to ask the time in Denver, the score of a hockey game, what the weather will be like tomorrow, or to reorder something you’ve previously purchased from Amazon. These features have come to the Echo over the past several … [Read more...] about Amazon’s new Fire TV can control your smart home, just like the Echo

As more and more people welcome internet-connected gizmos into their homes, the digital hunting grounds tend to get bigger and bigger for hackers. You hear about it every so often — one week it’s a nefarious exploit discovered in a line of popular outlet switches, the next it’s a smart refrigerator that gets hacked to send spam texts. And that’s just the beginning. As more household fixtures come online, they’ll bring more vulnerabilities with them — your connected locks could be hacked to let in burglars, your connected microwave might get infected with a botnet and launch cyberattacks against activists in another country, and data from your thermostat could be used to track your movements. Keeping your smart home safe from digital attacks is of the utmost importance, but unfortunately, getting high-level network security in your home is either extremely expensive, extremely complex, or both.Fledgling startup Itus Netwroks thinks … [Read more...] about Protect your smart home from hackers with iGuardian

Having been limited to appearances in sci-fi movies just a few years ago, today virtual assistants are everywhere — from smartphone tools like Siri, Google Now, and Cortana to stand-alone devices like the Amazon Echo.Now a new Kickstarter project is throwing its hat into the ring with Lucy, a smart home assistant that essentially takes the form of a giant iPad for your wall.Boasting a touchscreen LED HD display in either 17-, 24-, or 27-inch form factors, complete with camera and voice control, Lucy is hoping to raise 100,000 euros ($112,000) to bring its creator’s vision to life.“The inspiration came from the idea of having a chalkboard in your house, so you can write down messages to other members of your family,” creator Oliver Winkler told Digital Trends. “After that it grew, and kind of merged with the idea of a picture hanging on the wall. We thought this could be a communication tool, a way to display and showcase photos, and a smart … [Read more...] about Wall-mounted Lucy will control your smart home through voice, facial recognition

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The acquisition, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close by the end of the year.“At Motorola Mobility, we continue to invest in our converged experiences portfolio, and 4Home provides a wealth of services and software applications that offer consumers control and information for their digital lives,” said Dan Moloney, president, Motorola Mobility. “The addition of the 4Home portfolio helps expand our vision of converged experiences in the home and beyond.”4Home delivers connected home services through its carrier-grade software platform, ControlPoint. Services include energy management, home security and monitoring, media management and home health. ControlPoint is based on a customizable design, using open standards that allow partners to develop on top of it and reach the growing demand for connected devices in the home.“As part of Motorola Mobility, the 4Home … [Read more...] about Motorola acquires connected home services developer 4Home

Smart-home-device makers are becoming separated into two categories: the early pioneers and those playing catch-up. We’re seeing a lot of the latter at CES 2015, but even those entering the market now are still have a shot at getting settled on the ground floor of the smart home hub phenomenon. Plus, they have a benefit of a bit of hindsight, thanks to those that came before them.Oomi is one company that’s making its debut at CES 2015, with its Starter Kit. What it seems to have learned from its predecessors is that we’re quickly approaching the time when consumers might not want to put their smart home together piece by piece but in one fell swoop. Also, simplicity is golden.The kit comes with a Cube (the hub), a tablet, and a wearable device. All that gear might make it attractive to someone starting from scratch when it comes to smart-home tech, and the company clearly wants to try to connect everything in your home. It also provides additional devices that … [Read more...] about With Oomi, connecting your smart home is as easy as tapping the pieces together

Updated on 06-01-2017: The Dojo is now available. In 2015, an HP study found that all the connected home security systems it tested had critical flaws — from encryption issues to a failure to require strong and complex passwords — that left them vulnerable to spying. In the wild west of the smart-home landscape, the responsibility of policing our devices rests on consumers’ shoulders, and most of us do not know where to begin. Luckily, there is Dojo from Dojo-Labs (acquired by U.K. security company BullGuard last year), a two-device system that monitors all your connected equipment for cyber attacks. One part connects to your router; the other, which looks like a smooth, black rock, sits out in the open and flashes different colors based on what is happening on your network. Green means good, orange means something is happening but the system is taking care of it, and red means you need to intervene. The display unit is battery powered and connects via … [Read more...] about Someone hacking your smart home? The Dojo glows to let you know